Bathroom saga continued…

Posted on June 4, 2012

This is the second part of the master bath saga. Feel free to catch up on part 1, it’s ok, I’ll wait.

Day Two: my new friends show up and start to work. I can’t imagine they’d like me to hover, so I leave them to their projects. Mid-afternoon I head upstairs to check out how far they’ve gotten and there is a “knee” wall that is SO much larger than ANYTHING we discussed and the shower pan is completely the wrong shape. Ugh, here comes more drama to the master bath saga…

Ok… I can handle this, right? (I’m not a huge fan of conflict with strangers and Brian happened to be out of town) “Ummm, well… that’s not what I thought the shower was supposed to look like at all.”

SO here’s the thing- Brian and I talked shortly after the contractor left the meeting with him. I was told the shower was supposed to have a opening at a 45 degree angle, with a shorter knee wall and the opening for the shower was supposed to be much larger. Brian was very specific that he wanted as few right angles as possible in the bathroom since everything else was so stark and a bit harsh. He wanted a very “natural” feel. The pebble rocks were supposed to “flow” out of the shower pan in a simple design intersecting with the floor as if they were scattered about.

The wall they built came all the way to the edge of the shower pan, where there was an abrupt end and then an opening on one whole side for a piece of glass and a doorway- not what was described to me at all.

After explaining all that to them, the boss was called, and it was determined that I was full of it. (mansplaining much?)

Ummm, no, I wasn’t- I had the same conversation with “the boss” when he came to talk to me late last year, Please fix it.

The compromise was the wall was cut back about 8 inches or so. It looked a bit odd, but at least I felt like you could fit a human being into the shower. The floor tile discussion was had and I thought we had an understanding… until the boss showed up at the house. I was informed that I was asking for hundreds of dollars in custom tile work and it wasn’t that they “couldn’t” do it. They just wouldn’t. When asked why he would discuss it with Brian and leave him with the impression that was what was happening, he reponded that the rock tiles would “spill” over on the shower pan and that was enough. Oy!
Oh YEA… and guess what else?! I totally forgot to mention the best part- the rock tiles for the shower? Yea, they were the WRONG ONES! Remember that fabulous picture I posted in the last post of all the materials they were going to use? Yea, well he ordered the wrong tiles. My gorgeous river stones were now flat, black, and incredibly boring. So in choosing which “hill” I was going to die on, I picked the tile. That conversation went something like this:

After talking to the owner of the company, I went back into the bathroom and they were laying the ugly stones in the shower pan- “Well, this isn’t going to be good, those are the wrong tiles.”

Yea, the workers weren’t weren’t happy of course and the owner argued with me- “That was the number I wrote down in the meeting with Brian”.

“Ok, well, you wrote down the wrong number.”, I said. “When we went into your showroom and picked everything out, your wife did her level best to talk us out of the other tiles. The entire bathroom was designed around the tiles we wanted. I know exactly which ones we chose.”

“I brought the tile panel with me. These are what he picked out.

“Ummm, no, He would not have picked those, and certainly not without telling me about the change. Here, let me show you!”, and then I whipped out my “insurance policy”- My trusty smartphone (what did we ever do without these?). I displayed all the photos of the products we’d picked. I told him the story of his wife bringing the picture of the stones on a bathroom wall and telling me I didn’t want my bathroom to look like that. (Oops, but we did.)

There really wasn’t much he could say at that point. He showed me the paper he wrote his info on- when he wrote it, I have no idea. He said he’d go back to his office and check while mumbling something about maybe the number were the same or something…. (Good call)

Later he called to say he looked at the board and those other tiles really would look better anyway (really? couldn’t possibly be why we picked THEM in the first place?) Never did say how it happened or apologize for the error or rudeness.

Please understand, I am all for human error. I make mistakes ALL THE TIME. I also own them, and apologize. I don’t attempt to blame the person I am speaking with or “pass the buck” onto someone else. I also don’t vehemently deny things without checking them out first unless I am 200% certain. (It’s just good manners and I don’t particularly enjoy looking stupid.)

At the end of the master bath saga day 2, the guys pulled the old tiles from the shower pan (they were particularly irritated with me) and left early. Brian finally came home and confirmed the tiles were wrong so I felt less rotten, and we poured ourselves a drink.